The sad saga of Lena Dunham

I preface this review by saying that – unless you are the greatest admirer of Lena Dunham or anyone in the (admittedly impressive) cast of her new Netflix series, Too Much – it is very easy to give this particular show a miss. It is a tedious, unfunny collection of clichés, strange American-centric perspectives on life in London, a charmless, Dunhamesque lead, a chemistry-free central pairing and guest appearances from her famous friends that seem somewhere between embarrassed and incongruous. Yet there are many worse shows on streaming services, most of which have not attracted anything like The Discourse that Too Much has thus far – and which, I am painfully aware, this article is contributing to. Why this? Why now?

As anyone with passing interest in pop culture knows, Dunham created Girls in 2012. A show that focused on the lives and loves of four young women in New York, led by Dunham herself, it was intended to be a far less glossy and caricatured Sex and the City, focusing on everything from drug and alcohol addiction to mental-health struggles, all served up with a postfeminist soupçon of empowerment. It made Dunham one of the key writers and actors of her age; elevated Adam Driver – as the aloof, vaguely Byronic actor who dates Dunham’s character – to stardom; boasted a glittering cast of A-listers in cameo roles; and, perhaps not coincidentally, set a reaction in motion that exploded spectacularly a few years later.

Critics on the left attacked Girls for its lack of diversity, its focus on middle-class, financially viable protagonists and their “white-girl problems.” The show’s detractors on the right, meanwhile, saw in the confident, often unapologetically naked and defiantly liberal Dunham a girlboss nemesis that they dearly wished to see torn down to size. Eventually, Jezebel got on her case, mocking her and her show on a weekly basis, and sooner or later Dunham’s penchant for unfiltered, seemingly ill-thought-through remarks turned into controversy.

She remarked in 2016 that she wished she had had an abortion so she could understand the “lived experiences” of those who had; defended Girls writer Murray Miller from allegations of sexual assault by saying, “While our first instinct is to listen to every woman’s story, our insider knowledge of Murray’s situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3 percent of assault cases that are misreported every year,” then later confessed to not having any such insider knowledge; and, most ruinously of all, wrote in her memoir Not That Kind of Girl (2014)about interacting with her younger sister in a way that sounds an awful lot like abuse: “Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying.”

The backlash became overwhelming, and Dunham has therefore taken a considerable break from television writing over the past few years. Too Much, coproduced with the British rom-com specialists Working Title Films, therefore represents a high-profile comeback of sorts. Dunham herself only has a small role in it as Nora, the sister of Megan Stalter’s protagonist Jessica, but this is a Lena Dunham show through and through: created by her, directed primarily by her (eight of the ten episodes) and with every episode written or co-written by her. It is, apparently, loosely based on her own experience of moving from New York to North London, falling in love with and marrying the British musician Luis Felber and finding her creative energies revitalized, which is undoubtedly heartwarming for her. It’s just a shame that the show is so bewilderingly poor.

The first problem is the casting and conception of its lead. Statler’s Jessica has bull-in-a-china-shop energy, all big personality and abrasive actions, that brings to mind a younger Melissa McCarthy. Unfortunately, any chance for the character to develop into a recognizable human being is smothered by the demands of quirk. She has a revolting, hairless miniature dog that she touts around like a baby; composes unsent would-be-insightful video messages to her exboyfriend’s new influencer fiancée (Emily Ratajkowski, whose presence here is not the only thing that feels about a decade out of date, including cameos by Jessica Alba and Rita Ora); and works with an off-the-peg assembly of similarly kooky Anglo-Americans in an advertising agency.

There are jokes about her ignorance of British culture, her knowledge of which is mainly derived from period dramas – she lives in a housing estate that she had expected to be a grand mansion, talks of British Jones’s Diary and hopes to be swept off her feet by a dashing Englishman. But instead, she meets the near-comatose struggling musician Felix (played by Will Sharpe), who, for reasons best-known to Dunham, finds the loud, aggressive Jessica irresistible and begins a relationship with her. There are ups and downs, but ultimately this is a London-set romantic comedy, and you can guess how it will resolve itself.

I initially wondered if Dunham had conceived the entire show as a subtle parody of Emily in Paris (2020),in which couture and decorously conceived love triangles are replaced by gritty urban estates and spitting during sex. If so, it isn’t a bad idea, but the joke wears thin very quickly. For a series like this to remain watchable over ten episodes, there must be characters you care about, a central romance that you can invest in and subsidiary figures who provide both comic relief and, when needed, emotional intensity.

Instead, alas, we simply have Dunham offering audiences the next stage of her creative and personal post-Girls existence, inviting the haters to take pot shots at her, all over again. Would that she had not made it quite so easy for them to do so. Too Much is one of those rare shows that really does live up to its title, and suggests that even if Dunham was, once, the voice of her generation, that that torch has long since passed to other, more interesting talents.